Top German chef Thomas Buhner plans to open a restaurant in Taiwan

Top German chef Thomas Buhner plans to open a restaurant in Taiwan

2022-11-02

Top German chef Thomas Buhner plans to open a restaurant in Taiwan! The three Michelin star chef is working with a Taiwanese team to open a restaurant here in 2023. In the last three years he’s come to Taiwan many times, exploring the country and getting to know Taiwanese cuisine. Food experts hope his arrival will bring more elite restaurants to Taiwan.

Tender breast of duck is offset by caramelized pumpkin puree. Spanish carabinero prawns with desiccated persimmons are a many-layered treat. These are Thomas Buhner’s signature dishes. Now Buhner’s restaurant menus will move from Germany to Taiwan.

Thomas Buhner
Michelin chef
I spent, last year, two months in Taiwanese quarantine hotels. So now I am the No. 1 quarantine-hotel-knower in Taiwan. That’s the reason that gave me the chance to explore the island.

Buhner has come to Taiwan for work many times in the last three years, visiting small farmers, and finding Taiwanese flavors to incorporate into his dishes. He even went to New Taipei’s Yingge District to see the ceramics, and tasted local specialties like seafood and beef noodles. But his favorite discovery was oysters with salted black bean paste.

Thomas Buhner
Michelin chef
We visited together a street-food kitchen in Kaohsiung. We have had an oyster dish. For me it was amazing – poached oysters with a sauce based on soy.

Buhner has been a chef for more than 30 years. He received his first Michelin star in 1996, two stars in 1998, and became a three-Michelin-star chef in 2012. He retained the three stars for seven more years, becoming a legend in German culinary circles. Noticing Taiwan’s potential, he has invested his work here, but he doesn’t intend to settle here personally.

Thomas Buhner
Michelin chef
Would I move to Taiwan? No, it’s not possible. Because I have a family in Osnabruck, and my wife – but I would like to share my experience, my vision, my everything, with a young team.

Buhner says he plans to spend 200 days of the next year in Taiwan, bringing his sumptuous menus to Taiwanese diners and attracting more culinary focus to the country.

愛上台灣風土人情德米其林三星主廚將來台開店

2022-11-02

德國知名的米其林三星主廚湯馬仕，明年即將來台開餐廳，之前因為工作來台，喜歡上台灣的風土、人情，也看見台灣潛力，湯馬仕常常拜訪小農，也品嘗台灣路邊攤，像是牛肉湯，不過他最愛的是豆豉鮮蚵。

粉嫩鴨胸，搭配焦糖化的南瓜汁，襯托風味，還有西班牙大紅蝦，和去除水分的柿子一起入口，更有層次，這些都是米其林三星主廚Thomas Bühner的招牌菜，不過，想吃不用飛到德國，因為他決定將餐廳搬到台灣。

[[米其林三星主廚 Thomas Bühner]]
“(因為工作)去年花了兩個月住在台灣的防疫旅館，我算是台灣第一名的隔離者，這就是原因，讓我有機會探索台灣”

Thomas Bühner因為工作，三年內數度來台，除了拜訪小農，將台灣食材融入菜色，還到鶯歌看陶瓷，也品嘗在地美食，像牛肉湯、海鮮，不過，他最愛的是豆豉鮮蚵。

[[米其林三星主廚 Thomas Bühner]]
“我們一起去吃高雄的路邊攤，有一個鮮蚵。我個人覺得很棒，是一個水煮的鮮蚵加上醬油的樣子”

Thomas入行超過30年，1996拿下米其林一星，隔兩年就拿下二星，2012成為三星主廚，接下來連續7年，都維持米其林三星，是德國餐飲界的傳奇人物。他看見台灣的潛力，在台投資，不過暫時不會定居台灣。

[[米其林三星主廚 Thomas Bühner]]
“目前不可能定居台灣，因為在德國有家人，我太太。但是我希望分享我的經驗、我的視野、我的一切給年輕團隊”

強調未來一年，會有200天待在台灣，為台灣料理增添豐富性，也帶來味蕾饗宴，期望可以將台灣料理推上國際。

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Chiu Kuo-cheng
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Defense minister Chiu Kuo-cheng once again stated that Taiwan would have a chance at winning against China in a conflict. He added that the military is not afraid of defending Taiwan against an attack, but would also not seek to stir up conflict. In recent days, Chiu has been asked on many occasions to comment on China’s use of intimidation. KMT lawmaker Cheng Li-wen on Wednesday compared a Chinese attack on Taiwan to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has been going on for almost a year. She asked the minister whether Taiwan would be able to last that long against China without assistance from the U.S.

Cheng Li-wen
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For Taiwan, having U.S. assistance or not makes a big difference.

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I’d like to report to you all that my opinion has not changed. We’ll rely on ourselves for our defense.

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How many troops can be mobilized within 24 hours of an attack?

Chiu Kuo-cheng
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We can do 200,000 troops. We wouldn’t need that many right away. But we would see the situation in different areas and gradually deploy them. We’ve conducted drills in the past. So it would absolutely be possible to do that in 24 hours.

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Taiwanese hiker admires Nepal’s Tilicho Lake and even spends the night

Pingtung hiking enthusiast Domi Wang recently made headlines for summiting the mountain by Nepal’s Tilicho Lake, the highest lake in the world. The 34-year-old photographer also managed to camp beside the frozen lake. Few hikers attempt the challenging journey. Let’s hear more from Wang now.

Mug of coffee in hand, Domi Wang looks out over Nepal’s Tilicho Lake, the highest in the world.

Pingtung native Wang is serious about hiking. On her recent trip to Nepal, she achieved her dream of camping overnight on the mountain beside Tilicho Lake.

Domi Wang
Hiking enthusiast
What was hard was trying to camp by the lake, because there’s absolutely nowhere to spend the night. Generally people choose to just walk up it and leave the same day.

Hiking at such high altitudes is extremely taxing. The path takes hikers across rocky slopes at temperatures of minus 5 degrees Celsius. That’s enough to freeze a camera fast, a serious test of will.

Domi Wang
Hiking enthusiast
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Domi Wang
Hiking enthusiast
It counts as a normal walk, what we call a normal hike. It’s not like the kind of walks experts do, where you might need to acquire a lot of sponsorship and organize a team, and expenses are several million NT dollars. My trip to Tilicho cost about NT$170,000. Of course, that’s not exactly cheap. I did all kinds of casual work beforehand to save up money to go travelling.

On her hike, Wang also ran into Nepalese off-road motorcyclists who were attempting to summit the mountain on their bikes. They made a record for the highest altitude motorcycle ride in Nepal, and Wang caught their celebration on camera. This is surely a trip she’ll never forget.

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Northeasterly winds, combined with peripheral effects of a recent storm and typhoon, have brought extremely heavy rainfall to Yilan in recent days. Especially hard hit was this mountainous area, which has the highest accumulated rainfall nationwide so far this year.

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Total rainfall for October reached 4,574 millimeters. That’s the heaviest rainfall recorded by any weather station in Taiwan over the course of the month. Since the beginning of the year, the mountain has seen more than 9,500 millimeters of rain. One meteorologist says the area could see more than 10,000 millimeters before the year ends.

Chen Kao-chu
Yilan weather station
The peripheral effects of typhoons combined with northeasterlies both impacted local weather in the county. There’s also Datong Township in Nan’ao, where there is a windward mountain face that always gets rainfall. On some days more than 1,000 millimeters of rain will fall on that mountain.

Previously, the Central Weather Bureau had named Daping in New Taipei’s Wanli District as the rainiest place in Taiwan. The village gets an average of more than 6,500 millimeters of rain every year. Now that a weather station has been installed on Ximao Mountain, it could be a contender for rainiest place.

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The Central Weather Bureau recently released two maps showing the absolute speed and relative speed at which different areas of Taiwan moved due to tectonic action between 2009 and 2018. The blue arrows represent the direction of the shift, and their length represents the distance of the movement. The maps left some internet users wondering whether that meant that Taiwan was gradually moving away from China. A seismologist says that’s not the case.

Chao Hsiao-ling
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the Eurasian plate covers both west Taiwan and China. They are on the same continental plate, meaning they move in the same direction. Taiwan and China are moving together.

Taiwan is located at the convergent boundary between the Eurasian Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate. Thanks to a network of sensors, researchers found Taipei is moving by 0.5 centimeters every year. Over at the rift valley running through Hualien and Taitung, the speed is 6 centimeters per year. According to the findings, the fastest moving area is Orchid Island, which is shifting toward Taiwan proper at a speed of 8 centimeters per year. The network of 450 sensors provides valuable information on seismic faults and volcanic activity as well as data on subsidence and sliding underground. They hope the data can help scientists find signs that a big earthquake is going to strike. They add that tectonic movements will eventually cause the island of Taiwan to be thinner and more elongated in the future.

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He mixes the butter and flour thoroughly. Then he adds the dough into a plastic bag and puts it into the refrigerator.

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Cheng Hsien-hao
Pie baker"
In the past, I also have been to America for a language school for maybe around three months. During that time, I also went to New York and California to try their desserts. I really enjoyed it. When I came back to Taiwan, I met Way. He had the same problem; he couldn’t find the same flavor with his mom’s apple pie. We said, "Maybe we can try making it ourselves." I still remember when he took the pie out of the oven. He tasted it and said, “Finally, we can have a slice of home here in Taiwan.”

Before starting their business, Cheng worked in marketing. His business partner taught English in Taiwan. Cheng says they learned how to make pies by experimenting.

Cheng Hsien-hao
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We studied by ourselves because Way already had the flavor in his brand. So we just tried to look at a lot of recipes. We tried again and again. We just try and taste it. Actually, we also spend a lot of time doing other desserts. Our company’s goal is to make people feel that they have the home taste anytime and anywhere in Taiwan. Especially, the feeling of home. Especially, use western ingredients.

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